


Virgo Boy

by angel_b0mb



Category: Twisted-Wonderland (Video Game)
Genre: Birthday Sex, Emotional Baggage, Ink as lube, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Overstimulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:14:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26429962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_b0mb/pseuds/angel_b0mb
Summary: In which, on his birthday, Jamil is assaulted with a rather massive surprise party, and then whisked away by his tentative boyfriend Azul for another surprise that doesn't quite go as Azul has planned.There's nothing Jamil hates quite as much as surprises.
Relationships: Azul Ashengrotto/Jamil Viper, Kalim Al-Asim & Jamil Viper
Kudos: 142





	Virgo Boy

**Author's Note:**

> I originally had no intention of writing a Jamil birthday fic in spite of him being my favorite, but the birthday mirror pu got me so hyped up I began feverishly developing this and couldn't stop thinking about it. Jamil and Azul are my OTP, so I really wanted a fic where Azul wants to give Jamil sex for his birthday, but I also wanted it in the context of their greater relationship, a bit awkward and emotionally strained, with the two of them trying to connect but having to overcome a bit of a barrier, because they're both such "playing 4D chess constantly and trying to avoid actually saying their true feelings" types.
> 
> However, I think Azul deep down is a bit of a romantic somehow, whereas Jamil is a bit more of a realist.
> 
> But what I'm trying to say is...I meant to write a sexy fic and it got a bit away from me! I hope you enjoy my incredibly self-indulgent story. 
> 
> Jamil Viper is a Virgo and it Shows.
> 
> music:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0PAqxbGXsg

“I want to give you a gift.”

The declaration from Azul comes out of nowhere, cutting loudly in the quietness of the library, where before there’d only been the sounds of their pens scratching. He deems maybe he can ignore it, or at the very least delay his answer until he comes up with an excuse as to why he’s refusing birthday gifts this year, too, but Azul is already one step ahead of him. His hand comes down on Jamil’s own, and he’s forced to look up from his Ancient Incantations homework, if only to acknowledge the gesture.

“Why?”

“Because,” Azul says, giving the hand a squeeze, “it’s your birthday.”

For any other boyfriend it would be, perhaps, a romantic gesture, but coming from Azul it’s always just slightly unnerving. There is still a complicated part of them entangled in some strange and permanent suspicion of each other, even if both of their Overblots have long come and gone, and everything is spilled out into the open.

“I told you,” he says, “I’d actually prefer not to get any presents. I don’t need anything I’m going to have to reciprocate on your birthday.”

“The present I’m thinking of is not something you can reciprocate,” Azul says. “I know you’re deeply wary of such things, and I understand…but please, Jamil. _Trust me_.”

Ah, those words.

The two worst words in any possible language.

If anyone were to give him a gift for his birthday, it would be nice if for one day, they would stop saying that.

“I _insist_.”

Pushy, as usual. Azul never knows when to leave well enough alone, and he gives Jamil’s hand a squeeze again, as though that’s somehow going to tinge the mood to something rose-colored where his heart sweetly skips a beat.

Saying no to Azul is, sometimes, more trouble than it’s actually worth. That was how they had ended up here in the first place, on a study date. The actual ‘study’ part of the date had been Jamil’s insistence, because he actually did have homework to do, and he’d rather keep at something productive than sip coffee at the Mostro Lounge for the third date in a row.

The ‘date’ part was Azul’s fault.

It had started with some side glances at him in class, longer than usual, as though rather than just trying to gauge him like usual, Azul was simply…looking at him with scant reason. That had been weird enough, but he had brushed it off to the unfortunate Overblot incident, as he tended to sweep all of his recent odd interpersonal actions into lately, and ignored it.

Then Azul had dropped the breaker.

Azul was bad at a lot of things. Flying. Losing. Shutting up.

But Azul Ashengrotto was by no means a klutz.

Their hands had brushed, only on accident, and Azul had dropped the beaker. It hadn’t shattered, he’d had the sense to slow it and settle it gently back on the table with a quick spell, but it was the aftermath that had made Jamil unnerved. Azul had blushed up his cheekbones, around the shell of his ears, down the back of his neck, a true flush that shown brightly under his milk-white skin.

“My apologies,” he’d said quietly.

They’d already had an agreement to go over their experiment report and notes after class before handing it in, and it was at that point the scale had tipped.

“Date me,” Azul had said.

He’d looked up from his Alchemy notes, then thought maybe, if he was lucky, he could ignore that.

“We’d make a good pair. We already do.”

_Time elapsed: 045:38:03_

“Do you like me?”

“I think we’re compatible.”

_Potion effect: unable to evaluate_

“That’s not what I asked.”

 _Experiment results:_ _undeterminable_

He’d sighed, put down the pen, and looked up to finally meet Azul’s gaze, which was staring at him unwaveringly, his Alchemy experiment report form in front of him still blank. It meant business if this was keeping him from doing his homework. Azul did not slack for anything he considered trival.

“What do you get out of it?”

“The same you’ll get out of it.”

“I don’t know what that would be.”

“This,” Azul had said, gesturing to the table in front of them. “We’re a good pair. We’re compatible. And I want to see how far we could push that compatibility.”

He had weighed the options in his head. Azul exceeded in mental calculations between the two of them when it came to numbers, but he exceeded in mental calculations of the potentialities that came with trying to refuse someone as boneheaded and stubborn as half the people in Night Raven College. Azul being at the top of the list in persistence, perhaps even exceeding Kalim if that was possible, if only in sheer ruthlessness.

Saying yes was easier than no.

Dating itself was easier than he’d even thought. It slipped easily into the cracks of his daily life, because it turned out as classmates they already spent more than enough time together that he’d barely noticed.

Kissing, it turned out, was also easier to get into the habit of than expected. More than once they’d lost track of time tangled up in each other, a strange mess of limbs that Jamil found it easy to get caught up in. If anything, it at least felt good, and occasionally they’d even gone so far as to touch each other lightly through their clothes, grinding against each other until they’d made a sticky mess of themselves. As much as he’d thought Azul would be opposed to the type of thing like that, given he seemed to always be pristine in every fashion, even down to his neatly-filed nails, Azul strangely never objected, and in fact sometimes seemed to be the one pushing for more, desperate to push their bodies together with barely room to breathe between them.

Even now he seems to have that same sort of neediness, the way he tangles Jamil’s fingers in his own. He rises from his chair, comes ‘round the side of he table, lacing their fingers even tighter together with another squeeze.

“Jamil,” he says, and places a perfectly timed kiss on his lips. It’s gentle, but with a slight pressure to remind him how soft and warm kissing Azul feels. The temptation to get lost in it is strangely potent, but Azul breaks it quickly, and murmurs into his ear, “ _Trust me_ , please.”

“Fine,” he says in a resigned tone, pulling Azul down for another kiss, just one more soft touch of those lips before returning to his homework. “Surprise me.”

* * *

The surprise party Kalim is throwing for him is not a surprise, because the entire school has been invited, so naturally there is nobody left to keep the secret.

It is also especially not a surprise because Kalim, in a slight moment of airheadedness, had left a stack of invitations in the middle of the kitchen counter. Twice.

Still, even though it was clearly no longer a surprise, and had not actually been a potential surprise for longer than five minutes, that didn’t stop people from annoyingly _acting_ like it was still a surprise. The closer the calendar edged to the actual date, the more an increasing number of people began stopping by the dorm with suspicious reasons to talk to Kalim. Trey Clover had even stopped by their cafeteria table yesterday to update Kalim on a “special project”, which he had said with a slight nod towards Jamil, as if to say, _you and I both know we’re playing this for his sake_.

Just like with Azul, Kalim was another person at the top of the list of irritatingly persistent people, though where Azul had ruthlessness in spades that made him easily unlikeable at times, Kalim had a charm that made him almost too likeable, to the point where telling him ‘ _no_ ’ felt like an exercise in one’s own stubbornness more than a testament to Kalim’s own.

Luckily for himself, Jamil Viper was also one of those annoyingly persistent people.

He just didn’t oft have the desire to exercise such persistence, and what little he had exercised of late was still mostly just endurance.

Of all the people who had thought that after his Overblot things would change, he had never been one.

He knew, better than anyone, that it wasn’t merely a matter of expressing how he really thought. It had never been about that. It had been about swallowing the consequences of it, and the fact that for a long time, Kalim had been entirely ignorant of the fact that he _had_ consequences.

“Kalim,” Silver says softly, meeting them midway in the hallway on their way back to the mirror room, “I’ll try to come tonight. I won’t sleep through it, Lilia promised.”

“Great, great! You’ve never been to the dorm, right? You’ll love it, there’s gonna be so much food and music and—“ Kalim, seemingly understanding he was about to ruin the supposed surprise at the nervous look on Silver’s gaze, fixed on Jamil’s own face, abruptly cut himself off. “After we um…study. We can dance after we study. Magic. You and me.”

“Of course.”

And with that, Silver breezily leaves as suddenly as he’d come, leaving Kalim looking a bit sheepish, hands gripping the strap of his schoolbag so tightly his knuckles blanch.

“Studying?”

“You know…” Kalim laughs. “We’re in the same class, so…” He sighs, and glances up at Jamil through his long, white lashes. “I know you know. You don’t have to pretend anymore if you don’t want to.”

He’s actually taken aback, for once, and in a different sense from how Kalim normally manages to stun him with it.

“It’s just…” Kalim says sheepishly, “it’s kinda fun to pretend, I guess? But I know you saw the invitations I left in the kitchen, and you’d have figured it out anyway, probably. It’s tonight anyway, so all you have to do is come! And maybe act a little surprised. A tiny bit. For everyone else’s sake!”

Sometimes, Kalim really is almost too likeable.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, stepping headfirst into the mirror. He glances back and watches as Kalim’s sheepish expression turns to something joyful. “But I’ll come help you study with Silver tonight, if that’s what you want.”

“Yes! And please wear your nicest suit!”

“To study?”

“For good luck…in studying.”

He snorts. Talking like this is strangely fun, somehow, maybe if only because Kalim has explictly given him permission not to do it.

Really, that’s a first. Or a near-first. Kalim has been a bit less pushy since his Overblot, but he is always unsettled by the fact it might be more out of fear. Kalim is never the type to show it, that’s for certain. They’ve been side by side long enough that Jamil has seen more than once Kalim pushing down something unpleasant because he’d rather not see someone else uncomfortable in his stead.

But this is the first time in recently memory Kalim has directly looked at him and told him he doesn’t have to play along if he doesn’t want to.

It almost makes him want to play along more, if only because he doesn’t have to do it.

He arrives to his room, sets down his schoolbag, and snorts again, because there’s the ‘nicest suit’ Kalim had talked about laid out on the bed, complete with a bright yellow sash that reads _Birthday Boy_.

How any of them had intended to actually keep the ‘surprise’ in ‘surprise party’ is a real mystery.

* * *

Scarabia is more packed than he’s ever seen it, uniforms from nearly every dorm, save Diasomnia, who seem to be reluctant to show up to just about everything. The tall pillars are draped in fabrics of many colors, even along the vast hallways, giving a colourful atmosphere the likes of which he hasn’t seen since the time they’d hosted the Headmaster.

“Jamil!” Kalim yells as soon as he enters the common room, weaving through the crowd like he’s dodging clouds on his carpet. “Surprise! Or well, not really, but…”

“No,” he says, taking a pause to glance around the room and realizing that, while Kalim favored grand parties, he’d never once considered how massive of a scale Kalim had been planning for this one, “this is…a surprise, alright.”

“Wait,” Kalim says. “I have a gift for you. It’s small, I promise. I know you said no gifts.” He reaches into his pocket and produces a small good brooch in the shape of a cobra, which he sets to work fixing to Jamil’s lapel. “There! Like the Sorcerer of the Sand,” he grins. “I hope you like it. I thought it’d match.”

“It’s great,” he says, running his thumb over the tiny textured scales, and it feels good to genuinely mean it. As far as presents Kalim might get him could go, he’d feared something too grand, just like the party, but it’s surprisingly perfect.

Kalim glances up at him, seemingly antsy, like he can’t stay still for too long.

“You in a hurry?”

“Yeah,” Kalim sighs. “I gotta go, I’m sorry!” he says, backing up towards the crowd. “Silver texted me, and I promised I’d come get him! He says he’s bringing a plus one!”

“I’ll see you later,” he says, and he can feel himself genuinely smiling, high on Kalim’s contagious enthusiasm. “Be careful on your way to Diasomnia.”

“I will!”

Kalim bounds off, likely to grab his carpet from the treasure room, and he occupies himself by slipping into the crowd to look around the now-transformed common room.

When he sees the trays of steamed rice and curries, he’s touched, if only because he knows how truly reluctant Kalim is to ever touch it. Students are chatting, cups of sparkling punch and hot coffee in hand, splayed out on the numerous pillows and making little circles to talk in out of the groups of chairs that look suspiciously like they were loaned out from the Mostro Lounge.

The centerpiece of it all is a large cake, clearly made by Trey Clover, who is standing next to it, almost as though he’s been assigned to guard it from the mild chaos.

“Jamil!” he says upon spotting him. “The man of the hour. From all of us at Heartslabyul, a very Happy Birthday to you. I was excited to be able to make an actual birthday cake for once,” he says with a wry smile.

“You don’t make them often?”

“I spend a lot more time on Unbirthdays,” he says. “There’s quite a lot of them, you know.”

“Then I’m glad to be able to recieve your birthday cake.”

Trey looks like he’s about to say something else, but it seems in all the mulling about people have finally noticed Jamil’s arrival, and the floodgates have opened.

“Jamil! Happy Birthday!”

“Jamil! Best wishes, man!”

“Jamil, you look good! Picture for Magicam?”

“Happy birthday!”

“Nice party!”

His head spins, just a little bit, and Trey just smiles at him sheepishly, as if to say, _not much to be done, is there?_

The small crowd around him grows, people eager to get their wishes in, and he’s beginning to wonder if he’ll even be able to slip away long enough to taste any of those curries when a familiar warm hand snakes around his waist and pulls him forcefully enough to dislodge him from the crowd.

It helps the twins are so tall, the two of them forming a small wall of sorts as Azul pulls him off to the side of the room, a mysterious smile on his face.

“You were drowning,” he says with a small laugh. “And I wanted you to myself.”

“‘Grats, sea-snakey,” Floyd says with a relaxed smile. “Birthdays are fun, huh?”

“I think the same, it’s far different to have actual lit candles,” Jade says with a polite smile. “Happy Birthday, Jamil. We are honored to have been invited.”

“That’s more something you can thank Kalim for,” he says, “but I appreciate the well-wishes.”

“Is there a place for gifts?” Jade continues, “we have something small from us at Octavinelle.”

“I…have no idea,” he says, and he realizes it had never occurred to him that such a large party meant _gifts_. Possibly a lot of them. He would have hoped Kalim had put ‘ _no gifts_ ’ on the invitation, but it’s possible Kalim, the type of person to absolutely love birthday presents, would not have thought that far ahead. “Did the invitation not say gifts aren’t needed?”

“It did,” Azul says, “but we consider ourselves friends, so it need not apply.”

Strange, the way all it had taken was a complete mental breakdown for him to gain more _friends_ in the span of a few days than he had gotten his entire first year at this school.

“I’ll put it in my room quickly, then,” he says, taking the small box. “Thank you very much.”

“You’re most welcome.”

He slips from Azul’s grip and down the hallway to his room, and while the twins remain where they are, Floyd eyeing the dancefloor with a rather dangerously excited look, Azul follows him closely.

“You’re not going to open it yet?”

“Later,” he says. “But the way you’ve followed me here, I assume you have some business?”

“I can’t just be by the side of my boyfriend on his birthday?”

“You have that look,” he says, taking in the gaze Azul is eyeing him with right now, a strange type of anticipation in it, the calm before a storm, “like you’re waiting for something.”

“I want to give you the gift I promised,” Azul says, wrapping a warm hand around his waist again, and planting a sweet kiss on his lips, “but I need you to slip away with me.”

Slip away. After that small crowd, perhaps actually the thing he wants to do most, but there’s an inkling in him of what Azul actually means, with the way his thumb is softly stroking the curve of Jamil’s thin hipbones through the cloth of his pants.

“To where?”

“To my room,” Azul says bluntly. “You already made an appearance, and everyone is occupied with food. You won’t be missed. I’ve calculated from the time we arrive at Octavinelle we have,”—he checks his watch—“forty-five minutes.”

He now has no doubt Azul has definitely made his gift that sort of thing, and Azul is very much intending to take him to bed on his birthday. How, exactly, is still something far out of his fathoming, because Azul does not seem the type to just fully intend to relieve him of virginity altogether in the span of forty-five minutes with no forewarning. But Azul leans forward to kiss him again, thigh pressing lightly between Jamil’s legs, and ah, he can’t help but think their bodies really do seem compatible. Compatibility in that sense was something Azul had been entirely right about when he’d proposed this arrangement in the first place.

Azul takes his wrist and lightly pulls him down the corridor and out of the dorm, towards the mirror. The path outside is dotted with guests milling about here and there, but none of them really seem to say anything, or think anything suspicious at all.

Perhaps because, knowing Azul, he’s already calculated the more casually they walk and act as though this is perfectly normal and not strange in the least, the more likely they are to get away with it.

Outside Scarabia the corridors of the Mirror Hall and Octavinelle are eerily dark and deserted, perhaps because nearly the entire population of the school seems to be packed into Scarabia itself. The more Azul gently pulls him along, the more his heart begins to beat, and the anticipation grows. There’s a strange sense of taboo to this, skipping out on his own birthday party to get filthy in his boyfriend’s bed. He swallows, and finds his throat feels a little numb at the anticipation.

Had Azul known he would enjoy this? This strange aspect of being dragged through a deserted dorm to some sort of unknown hedonism?

His cheeks are starting to flush, and he finds he feels a little warm, actually, even though they’re not walking at a particularly rapid pace. It gets all the more heated once they reach the large white door he knows leads to Azul’s room, and Azul pulls out his pen to open the lock.

He can’t help himself. As soon as they’re inside he pulls Azul close for a kiss, hot and breathless, a little wound up from walking all the way here to some sort of unknown end. He can feel Azul smiling into his lips, and Azul’s fingertips reach up into the base of his scalp, gently splaying out, nails dragging down the nape of his neck.

“You’re surprisingly receptive, suddenly. Did something happen?”

Ah. A flush of embarrassment creeps up his cheeks, because it seems that, as much as it felt Azul had been deliberately leading him into this sort of thing, Azul hadn’t actually planned on him returning it.

“It’s nothing. I suppose I got swept up in your pace.”

Azul’s eyes shine brightly in the low light of the room. “No, it’s good. Wonderful. It means I have to explain far less my intention so, if you don’t mind…” Azul’s slim, gloved hands make their way to his shirt, deftly removing the sash and rosette and undoing the bolo tie, slipping it smoothly from around his neck. “All I wanted,” Azul says, beginning to make quick work of the buttons, “was to give you a chance to relax.”

“With sex?”

“With _pleasure_ ,” Azul says, opening his shirt and running his warm, delicate hands up the sides of his ribs in a way that makes Jamil shiver in his core. “I hope it’s not too forward of me to think you might enjoy this.”

He slips himself from his shirt, places it on the chair near the desk, and Azul’s hands move down to palm gently at the front of his pants, and then undo the zipper. He unclasps the cummerbund and lays that over the shirt, and then steps out of his pants completely, until he’s just in his underwear.

“You’re not undressing?” he says, watching as Azul moves to gather some bottles from the shelves.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Azul says. “I wanted this to be for _you_. I will not be focusing on my own arousal.”

“That’s a little…” he sighs, unable to find the words, exactly, other than ‘ _so like you’_.

It’s just like Azul to be both meticulously planned and working off some sort of flawless sheet in his head, but also so peculiar that sometimes a completely obvious detail escapes entirely.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

“It’s strange,” he says. “I thought we were going to…get off.”

“I told you,” Azul says, now setting down the bottles on the bedside table and undoing the buttons on his own shirt, “I wanted to give you pleasure. I want to touch you, and let you relax. Trust me. I know you’ll enjoy yourself.”

“And if I don’t?”

Azul sighs. “You can tell me ‘time out’ if you hate it,” he says. “We’ll use that for safety. But I don’t intend to do anything especially out of the realm of average human copulation, so I don’t think you’ll find yourself in an uncomfortable position, if that’s what you’re worried about. On the bed, please,” he says, finishing stripping himself of his clothing, and now equally as naked as Jamil, standing in his underwear. “And hands above your head. No touching. No helping me.”

“You’re quite serious about doing all the work.”

Azul smiles. “It’s not a gift if you help.”

“If you say so.”

Azul pulls at the band of his underwear, then, and pulls them down and off him completely. There’s something about that which makes his heart skip a beat even more than Azul undoing his shirt, the way Azul neatly slides them down both his thighs and his eyes appraisingly gaze between Jamil’s legs. He’s already aware he’s slightly hard, he’s been so since they shut the door but Azul runs a hand up one of his thighs and just continues to look just a moment too long, which makes him squirm slightly.

While he didn’t have any discomfort in just simply being naked, the way Azul was looking at him with such interest, eyes hungrily gazing and taking in every detail, was something he hadn’t thought about when it came to the possibility of sex.

“Relax,” Azul says sweetly, and he gives Jamil’s thigh another light stroke before grabbing a box from the bedside table and pulling out a pair of nitrile gloves that look like something the school nurse would use, if the school had one. “You’re sitting up again, please lay down.”

“Gloves?”

“We have a party to get back to, it’s easy clean-up. They’re thin, it’ll still feel like my hands.”

It’s not really the feel so much as the general peculiarity of it, but he bites his tongue.

Azul then pulls out a thin black scarf, and he’s about to ask what it’s for, when Azul goes to tie it around his eyes. “Blindfold,” he says, “so you can feel—“

“Time. No. Time out,” he says, before Azul can even finish the knot.

“Okay, okay, relax,” Azul says, as though he’s trying to appease a wild animal that’s about to strike. “No blindfolds. May I ask why?”

“I want to see where your hands are.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Positive.”

“Understandable,” Azul says, casting the scarf onto the nightstand. “May I continue?”

“Go ahead.”

Azul grabs a tall glass bottle of something dark and thick and pours a liberal amount onto his hands, slicking up his gloved fingers. When he pulls them apart, lewd strings of it stick together between his hands.

“Time,” he says again, and Azul huffs slightly. “What is that?”

“Lubricant.”

“What is it?” he repeats, half-sitting up. “Knowing you, it’s not just anything.”

“It’s…natural,” Azul says, and there’s a slight blush that begins to curl around the tops of his ears. “And food-grade.”

“Food-grade?”

He looks at it again, the deep shining black color, opaque. Natural. Azul’s slight reluctance to clarify.

“You should just say so if it’s your ink,” he says with a sigh. “Isn’t it weirder to pretend I’ll be creeped out by it?”

“You’re not?”

“I guess…it’s not any stranger for you than other body fluids, is it? Though keeping it in a bottle is a little—well, nevermind.”

“May I, though?” Azul says, gesturing with one slicked-up hand.

“Get on with it,” he says.

There’s a strange irritation building in him, somehow, where there was excitement not too long ago. It’s not even that he’s opposed to such things, or Azul’s quirks, but just the fact nobody around this school, even his own supposed boyfriend, ever seems to want to tell the whole truth, for some strange fear he’ll just run off altogether.

Wasn’t it Azul who’d said _trust me_?

Why was that always said, but not extended equally in his direction? Azul wanted his full and unbridled trust, but couldn’t seem to even extend the favor.

“You’re tense,” Azul says cautiously, “have I irritated you?”

“It’s…just get on with it.”

“ _Jamil,_ ” he says firmly. “Time out.”

“I thought that was for me to say.”

“I’m invoking it for you,” Azul says, sitting back on his calves, sticky hands held firmly up in the air in front of him, as not to soil the white sheets, “because you’re clearly not enjoying this.”

“I’ll be fine. Just…get me off.”

“Are you upset with me?”

“Azul,” he sighs, “I don’t feel like starting this. Not now. Not on my birthday.”

“We should start this especially on your birthday,” Azul says firmly. Unable to stop him from getting up with his hands, he resorts to putting a single foot on Jamil’s chest, pushing him back flat on his back. “Your birthday should be about what you want. And you don’t seem to be able to tell me that.”

“I just,” he says through gritted teeth, pushing Azul’s foot off of him and half-sitting up again, “what am I _doing_ here? What did you intend to do to me? What are you planning? If it’s a surprise, fine, I get that but just…dragging me off here, undressing me, promising it’ll be good and to trust you without even giving me any sort of idea what you’re doing,” he says, hitting a feverish pitch where he begins spitting out the words with all the frustration and venom he can muster, “I really don’t like surprises. And I had thought _you_ , of all people, would have that entirely figured out. In case you’ve forgotten,” he says, gritting his teeth and realizing he might actually be close to the verge of tears at this point, “the last surprise you gave me was showing up at our door with that seafood pizza. And we both know how that ended.”

The outburst feels good somehow, in spite of how bad feeling so irritated is. It’s a release in its own right. Today, even Kalim, who normally managed to be the most irritating, had been trying to give him enough space and had been surprisingly thoughtful. Azul, who he at the very least expected to be pushy, felt like he was being inordinately so.

They’re not in love. He’s not even sure if they’re in like. Azul had proposed this slightly sterile but somehow mutually beneficial arrangement, and while they’d gone so far as kissing and touching, this felt like Azul was almost pushing a step beyond that, trying to force his hand somehow.

He’s beginning to feel like it would actually have been easier to deal with such a surprise if it had been ordinary sex, because even that had a set of assumed directions it usually followed. This was nothing but a drive in the dark, and while he believed him when Azul said he wasn’t intending anything too unusual, there was still too large of a realm of possibilities for him to fathom.

Azul shifts uncomfortably and folds his leg back under him. He seems, for once, unable to really say anything, at least for a moment. In a way, it’s satisfying, knowing his outburst is at least enough to unsettle the oft-unshakeable Azul, which means Azul cares enough about what he thinks to take a moment to pause.

“I guess maybe I’ve overstepped a few bounds,” he finally says with resignation, after a solid thirty seconds of silence. “I should apologize,” he says with a wry, slightly sad smile, “I guess if I really could read you, I wouldn’t have made this mess from the start.”

“It’s not that much of a mess,” he sighs, flopping back onto the pillows. “It’s just…I still feel like I never know what you’re thinking under that smile. Even if you think you know what I’m thinking under mine. Even now, I still don’t even know why we’re…here.”

“In my room?”

“Dating,” he says. “You picked me because we’re compatible.”

Azul’s face softens slightly. “I asked you to date because I _like_ you,” he says. “I thought that much was obvious.”

His head spins, just slightly. There’s an unexpected skipping to his heartbeat, some part of him hidden away that had maybe actually been wanting to hear that, deep down. Something he’d pushed so far down because it was easier not to interrogate why saying yes had even been an option for him to begin with when Azul had asked.

“You’ve never said that.”

“It was implied,” Azul says, exasperated, and there’s a bright pink flush creeping up his cheeks and the sides of his neck, all the way to the tips of his ears. He crawls slightly closer on his knees, until he’s settled between Jamil’s thighs. He looks like he wants to reach out, and moves a hand, but then remembers they’re still covered in the ink, and quickly pulls it back. “I thought if I just merely gave the reasoning as ‘I like you’…you might dismiss me.”

“Were you just hoping it was obvious?”

“I guess…I was hoping it’d become mutual with time.”

Azul’s face has a rare look on it, something so vulnerable, the likes of which he’s scarcely seen. In a way, seeing him like this, the irritation in his chest begins to dissipate, like sand scattered by the wind. There’s usually an ulterior motive with Azul, he’s always highly sensitive to that, hackles raised whenever Azul comes around with one of those signature grins that stretch ear-to-ear.

Now, though, there’s none of that, just a slight misty look glossing over his bright blue eyes, and a sort of awkward desparation as Azul uncomfortably keeps shifting his knees lightly enough to make the bed creak a little. The actions of a man so used to planning and playing the long con that, when faced with so much uncertainty he can’t calculate for, he’d rather try to feign his way around telling a simple truth.

In some ways, he can’t say he’s not the same.

The emotions of others are a nuisance to account for. He reaches up and brushes a curl that’s fallen loose off Azul’s brow, and Azul seems genuinely surprised at the gentle touch.

“I don’t think you were wrong about us being compatible,” he says. “I think it’s just not how you thought.”

“How do you think I thought?”

“I think you don’t understand just how pushy you are,” he says, wrapping his legs around Azul’s waist and pulling him closer. “It’s annoying. You’re selfish. And you never want anyone else to know what you’re thinking, so you end up never explaining anything at all. Still,” he says, pulling him in for a kiss, tangling his hands in Azul’s hair while Azul can’t touch, unable to do anything but let himself be pulled in, “I think I’d find you a lot more unbearable if you were someone I couldn’t get irritated at to begin with.”

He licks up into Azul’s mouth with his tongue, feeling the softness of those lips, and Azul loses his balance a little, steadies himself with his left hand against Jamil’s shoulder, leaving a sticky smear of ink on his cheekbone in process. When they pull back for a breath, Azul’s glasses are slightly askew, and the pink flush stains across his skin, like he’s being painted over by a new color.

“Is it still time out?” he asks, a little breathless.

“Not if you tell me what you want to do to me first,” he says, unwinding his legs from Azul’s waist. “I just want to know where you plan to put those hands.”

Azul adjusts the gloves and grabs another handful of ink from the bottle, glazing them over again with a new oil-slick coat. “I just thought,” he says, “you seem like you can never relax. I wanted to give you that.”

“With?”

“I thought,” Azul says, shifting his position slightly so Jamil’s thighs shift apart, exposing him completely, “I’d try to give you more than one orgasm.”

He strokes an ink-covered hand across Jamil’s thigh, leaving a streak of black in his wake across Jamil’s deep golden skin.

“Is that possible?”

“It takes some work,” Azul says, and his tone shifts slightly, reminiscent of how he sounds when he’s eager and overconfident in his classwork. “But I’ve read about it enough to think I can take you to heaven.”

“Big words.”

“Can I try?”

He shivers as Azul rubs a sticky circle on his thigh, and then trails his hand up to lightly feather his touch against the crease of his groin. Azul’s gaze is appraising again, watching him carefully, and he can’t deny the atmosphere has thickened again, anew with a different understanding between the two of them of just where this is intended to go. Azul moves fingers to his soft length, to touch it, and hovers over it for a moment as their eyes meet.

“Keep going,” he breathes, and the air feels dense in his lungs, like every part of him is suddenly so aware of this that it hurts.

Azul rubs a slick circle on the head of his length, then takes it firmly in his palm and fists it in one hand, rubbing over the slit with a light touch with the other. It’s delicate, and he’s never thought himself particularly sensitive by any means, but maybe it’s just the awareness of someone else’s hands on him, the visual of himself in Azul’s slicked-up palm, and the knowledge of what Azul intends to do to him that has him suddenly feeling things more intensely than he’s remembered ever feeling them before.

The hand fisted around him begins to slowly find rhythm, rocking up and down, and the other one trails down further still, leaving him sticky in the patch of curls between his thighs. Azul tentatively slides his fingers lower, and knowing where this is going, he opens his eyes and raises his head to meet the tentative gaze Azul is giving him.

He grabs Azul’s wrist with his hand, then wraps his palm around Azul’s own, takes a single one of those slender fingers in his own and presses it forward. Azul slides inside him with ease, and he can’t suppress the light shiver he gives when Azul curls that finger upward and presses firmly into the slick pink inside of him.

“Is this good?” he murmurs.

“You can go deeper,” he breathes, swallowing thickly. “And one more.”

“No touching, now,” Azul says, pulling Jamil’s hand off his own and placing it back above his head. “Let me do the work.”

He adds another finger and firms up his grip, and if there’s one thing that is true about Azul, it’s that he’s always been good with his hands. Jamil has forgotten just how good, exactly, until now, now that he’s here on Azul’s bed, and those hands are making love to him. There’s no question about that in his mind, that this is _sex._ Azul is having sex with his body, using only those deft hands, and the more he understands that, the hotter his nerves start to burn.

Already he’s getting closer, and when Azul moves his thumb to circle the head of his erection in tandem with the thrusts inside him, he can feel the way his thighs start to shake, and the gentle hum of Azul’s voice in his brain, whispering his name so sweetly.

“Come for me, Jamil,” Azul is saying, voice sounding nearly as breathless as Jamil feels. “Come now.”

His back arcs and body shivers as he feels the release into Azul’s hand, a beautiful release, white leaking out of him and over the ink-blackened fingers Azul’s holding him in. He shivers, body aching with slight aftershocks as Azul doesn’t relent, but continues to pump slowly, to guide him through orgasm, still softly saying his name.

Azul pulls from within him for a moment with a lewd, wet noise, and he can feel the emptiness, the place that’s been stretched out inside him, slightly sore and sensitive from Azul’s steady touch. Then those fingers press back in, with a third one added now, and he feels his body give and stretch to settle around Azul’s hand, feeling so full, slightly aching. Azul presses his fingers up in a feather-light touch to stroke inside him again and his thighs shake so hard the bed rattles slightly, and he grips Azul’s pillow behind his head with white-knuckled fists.

“Jamil, tell me if it’s too intense,” Azul says, beginning to find a steady rhythm again, and wrapping his fist back around Jamil’s softening length, slick anew with more ink.

He lets out a moan as Azul presses firmer, slides his fingers deeper. His body aches from the sensitivity of his first orgasm, trembling. Azul bends to press a kiss to his chest and he shivers. Just the touch against his skin sets him on fire, and Azul continues to press light kisses against his chest, firming the pressure and running his thumb around the head of his erection while he does so. He presses a thumb against the slit, rubs at it gently, and he can feel the build in his core again, the hypersensitivity and ache tipping over into something more.

“You’re getting tighter around my fingers,” Azul murmurs into the skin of his chest. “Are you close?”

“Almost,” he breathes. “Kiss me.”

Azul leans in, and he wraps his legs around Azul’s waist again, pulls him the rest of the way. Those beautifully soft lips come down on his own, and this time it’s Azul’s turn to kiss him fiercely, to lick into the cavern of his mouth and stroke the silken insides of Jamil’s cheeks with his tongue. He moans deeply and Azul swallows it. His voice won’t quiet, and he can’t keep it from coming out, breathless noises that come from some deep part of him, and a trembling in his thighs as they shake, struggling to keep their hold on Azul’s waist.

This orgasm comes so differently from the first, ripped from him, and his hands find their way to grip into Azul’s back, nails digging into the soft, pale flesh of his shoulders. He comes, he comes so roughly and forcefully that it feels like Azul’s brought forth something from him, not just a release but a reckoning.

His breath is heavy, body spent, and Azul coaxes him through the aftershock, stroking his thighs, kissing them, murmuring some sweet words into them he can’t quite make out.

“How do you feel?”

“That was…thanks,” he says as Azul pulls his fingers from within him with another wet, lewd noise. “I’m glad I trusted you.”

Azul gives him another quick kiss and presses their foreheads together, bright blue gaze eating up his vision. “Thank you for trusting me.”

He sheds himself of the gloves and tosses them neatly in the trash beneath his desk, and pulls a towel from his wardrobe. The bed is a mess, white sheets smudged with black, and Jamil’s lower half is no different. Azul gently wipes it from him while he lays there, completely spent, with barely energy to lift a finger.

“Don’t worry about the sheets,” Azul says. “We’ve developed a detergent for that.”

“The lube was your choice,” he says. “I refuse to take any responsibility for the mess.”

“I wouldn’t make you,” Azul laughs. He lays a blanket he pulled from the top shelf of his wardrobe over Jamil’s lap and cuddles up next to him. Then he holds out a small white container he’s seemingly pulled from nowhere. “Forgive me, I have one more surprise for you,” he says, producing a fork. “I brought you cake.”

He stares into the small pastry box, at the piece of cake which is very clearly taken from the cake Trey had been guarding so faithfully at the party. Which had not yet been cut into when they’d left.

“How did you—?”

“A certain hyena is very negotiable if you have enough madols,” he says. “I know it’s selfish and pushy of me but…can I feed you it?”

He snorts. “You have such a weird romantic streak in you,” he says. “It doesn’t suit you at all.”

“But you’ll let me?”

“I won’t say no to my own birthday cake.”

Azul takes a large forkful of cake and holds it out, and he indulges, lets Azul feed him it before Azul takes a piece on the fork for himself.

“Is this floral cocoa?”

“It certainly tastes like it,” Azul says, eyes wide. “Kalim must’ve given Trey quite the budget.”

“He would,” Jamil sighs. He opens his mouth as Azul prods him for another taste of cake. “He really has no boundaries with money.”

“You have to admit,” Azul says, “it’s worth it, in the end. This flavor is incredible. I could eat the whole cake myself, if I was really left to my devices.”

“When we get back,” he says, “you have my permission.”

He shifts his legs and tries to get slightly more comfortable, hand settling on Azul’s thigh. “We’re far over your estimated forty-five minutes, I assume?”

“Far over,” Azul says, shovelling another forkful of cake in his mouth. “But I’m sure we can convince them we’re just two classmates who get along very well.”

His hand brushes up, originally seeking to lay it across Azul’s chest, but it skips between Azul’s thighs. There’s a firmness there under Azul’s underwear, and Azul lets our a soft noise of surprise.

“Jamil—“

“Are you still hard?”

“It’ll relieve itself eventually,” Azul says dismissively. “But seeing you like that, it was a bit impossible for it not to happen.”

“Put down the cake,” he says, pushing the blanket off him and sitting up on his knees. “It’s your turn now.”

“I thought the purpose of this wasn’t to worry about my needs,” Azul says, shoving the cakebox hastily onto the nightstand. “It’s your birthday.”

“Exactly,” he says, pushing Azul back onto the pillows and licking a small dab of frosting from his lower lip. “It’s my birthday, so let me at least do one thing I’ve decided I want.”

* * *

They arrive back to Scarabia at least two hours late, fingers lightly tangled together until they reach the mirror room, after which they decide it’s wisest to drop the affections. The dorm still has the occasional guests milling around, but the uniforms seem to be a lot less diverse, mostly Scarabia students still lingering, it being too early in the evening to retire to bed.

He can still feel the stretch when he walks, the soreness Azul left him with, and the slickness where some of the ink still lingers inside. A shower is badly needed, but that’s for later. For now, he revels in it, the secret taboo feeling as the two of them walk back, feeling like something has been exchanged between them that nobody else can share.

“JAMIIIIIL!” comes the yell from the balcony of the common room, and Kalim is standing there, waving as though he’s somehow impossible to spot despite his voice. “THERE YOU ARE! C’MON, WE’RE GONNA PLAY GAMES!”

He sighs, slightly dreading returning to the crowd from earlier, but Azul gently rubs the small of his back and they head up the stairs.

He’d expected a lot more people, but also finds the corridors of the dorm strangely empty save a few lingering Scarabia students. When they round the entrance to the common room, there’s only a few people left on the pile of pillows in the middle of the floor.

“Jamil!” Kalim exclaims, bounding up to them. “And Azul! I’m glad you’re back, we cut the cake, and then Silver came, and he brought Malleus! After that a lot of people left suddenly, I guess it was too late? But we’re still partying, if you want to join. Jamil, I put the curry you like in the fridge, should I go heat it up now?”

“I can get it, Kalim, you don’t have to—“

“No, no, Jamil it’s your birthday for,”—he checks his phone—“four more hours and thirty-six minutes! Until then you can’t lift a finger, sit down. I promise I’ll be careful!” he yells as he sprints down the hall to the kitchen, not looking like he has the intention to be careful at all.

They go to sit down and find a small group still left in the center of the common room: the Leech twins, Grim and Yuu, Silver, and sure enough, Malleus Draconia, sitting neatly on one of the pillows, looking entirely out of place among the decor.

“You’re sure you can eat it?” Silver is saying, handing him a slice of birthday cake.

“It’s not a _whole_ cake,” Malleus says. “Of course I can eat it, Silver. Thank you for your concern. Ah,” he says, great green eyes and horned head turning as Jamil and Azul arrive. “Jamil Viper. Thank you for the invitation.”

“You should thank Kalim,” Jamil says. “But thank you for coming. I hope you’ve been welcomed.”

“Of course,” Malleus says. “And I should wish you the most happiest of birthdays, Jamil Viper. Silver, give him the gift we brought, please.”

Silver hands him a small present box the size of his hand, inside which is a small stone figure modeled to look like a snake.

“It’s a replica of a grotesque,” Silver says. “Not a gargoyle.”

“Precisely,” Malleus says, taking a forkful of cake. “We hope it pleases you.”

“Thank you,” he says, slipping it into his pocket and not bothering to ask what either of them are talking about. “Kalim said we were playing games?”

“Mancala!” Kalim shouts from behind them, returning with a plate of curry haphazardly balanced on top of the mancala board in his hands. “Malleus said it sounded interesting.”

He quickly relieves Kalim of the bowl before there’s any chance of it tipping over into a steaming disaster on the floor.

“Ah,” Jade says as Kalim sets the board down in the center of the floor and begins separating the stones by color, “I remember hearing about this.”

“Last time was fun,” Floyd says, “But didn’t sea-snakey do somethin’ to it?”

“That’s true,” Azul says, eyeing him with a wry smile and going to sit down with the rest of them. “If I recall correctly, nobody could say who _really_ won those games, after all.”

“I’m gonna win all the games this time!” Grim boasts. “Last time was a fluke!”

“Is Viper talented?” Malleus says, finishing up his cake. “If so, it’d be wonderful to play against him.”

“Please just promise me you won’t get too competitive,” Silver says quietly. “It’s been a very nice party.”

“I have manners,” Malleus says firmly. “Lilia raised me to be a king.”

“Whaddaya say, Jamil,” Kalim says, patting the seat between himself and Azul. “Join us?”

He shovels in another spoonful of curry before putting down the plate on one of the tables and taking off his white blazer.

“Make room,” he says, settling himself down on the pillows with the rest of them and rolling up his shirt-sleeves. “It’s my birthday, and I’m about to kick all of your asses.”


End file.
